There's plenty of serious buzz about a forthcoming Apple television (most recently, Best Buy put out a survey that referenced a 42-inch, $1500 Apple-branded TV), and the desire to reinvent television is one of the highly secretive company's worst-kept secrets. While it's possible that this is simply the latest cycle of the constantly churning Apple rumor mill, I have little doubt that Apple intends to get around to TV eventually. Yet I'm skeptical about the value of an Apple television—at least in the short term.

Imagine what an Apple television would actually be. Unless Apple has built up some top-secret lab that is reinventing the basic technology of the LCD panel—which I don't think it has—then the company will be buying panels from a top-tier manufacturer such as Samsung. That means the best hardware specs you can expect would include an impressively thin 240-Hz LED-backlit panel with built-in Wi-Fi and maybe 3D capabilities (though Apple has not shown any real interest in that technology, unless you count its loose affiliation with Pixar).

That matches the specs of pretty much any television you can buy from Samsung right now. So what's Apple bringing to the table? Presumably, Apple brings to bear its talent for interface design, creating a custom-skinned version of iOS for televisions. But that exists already—and you don't need a new TV to take advantage of it. Anybody with $100 to spend can plug in an Apple TV peripheral and get a TV that's almost completely plugged into Apple's universe. (The thing is so light and small that you could easily tape it to the back of your existing TV, cover up the Samsung, LG, Sony or Vizio logo with an Apple sticker and pretend you have an Apple TV right now.)

For sure, there would be some extra bells and whistles that the Apple TV box doesn't have yet—a built-in webcam for FaceTime, deeper integration with other iOS devices such as iPads and iPhones, and the ability to run apps. But Apple could enable these features on the current Apple TV device (with the exception of FaceTime, but that could be done with a simple add-on or an AirPlay stream of FaceTime video from an iPhone). So far, Apple has made a conscious decision not to pursue such things.

An Apple television probably would be better than an ordinary TV, but certainly not so much better that I'd ditch my existing TV the way I ditched my Samsung BlackJack smartphone when the iPhone came out. And if I were shopping TVs, what could Cupertino offer that would make me pay more than a $100 premium (which would get me an Apple TV device, which I could, presumably, upgrade in a few years without a huge sunk cost). That leaves Apple competing on price in the famously low-margin TV business.

The idea that Apple can reinvent the television with an Apple TV is a fundamental misread of the problem. The reason that the current TV-watching experience sucks isn't the television itself—it's the cable box. The lion's share of interesting content coming into living rooms right now is held hostage by an industry that has shown little interest in improving the technology of its gateway device. And I guarantee Apple can't change that just by launching a new television any more than it could by creating the Apple TV peripheral. It's the cable box interface that's ripe for reinvention, and I doubt that the cable industry wants to hand over the keys to that device to Apple. Remember, Apple is one of the primary purveyors of a la carte TV programs, while the cable industry has an existential interest in keeping old system—paying for a package of channels—alive.

Here's what's so funny to me about all the talk of Apple reinventing TV. The technology that's really begging for an Apple-style reinvention isn't in the living room, it's in the driveway: the car infotainment system. Look at the state of automobile interfaces today and you'll see an industry floundering to integrate technology in a meaningful way without distracting their customers into an early grave. Every effort to make a car more connected and technologically sophisticated results in a nightmare of complexity and awkwardness. There have been some notable advances—the Ford/Microsoft Sync system has an impressive voice-recognition system, for instance. But next to an iPhone, or even a Windows Phone, it feels limited in scope and capability.

Apple has a well-deserved reputation for boiling down complex systems into simple UIs. And what's more, the company has a ready-to-go natural-language voice-control system in Siri that is a novelty on the iPhone 4S, but could be a revolutionary step forward on its own for automobile interfaces. Apple also could easily solve one of the most vexing problems for automakers—iPhone integration. Car companies have been bending over backwards trying to make iOS devices play nice with vehicles, when the simplest solution would be to make the car itself an iOS device.

One can easily imagine what a sweet experience a fully integrated iCar could be. Driving down the road, listening to your favorite music, you are informed by Siri that you have dinner with your wife in 30 minutes. "What restaurant?" you ask. Siri informs you of the name, then asks if you need route guidance. It then tells you that there is an estimated 10 minutes of traffic on the way (information that has been downloaded to the integrated nav system via your iPhone). You then ask Siri to reroute you, and also text-message your wife and let her know you're going to be a bit late. And the ability to integrate apps means that you can pick your own navigation software, as well as any music and information services you like. All of this and more is possible with the technology Apple has right now.

Automakers are famously protective of their interfaces, but in an era when Ford brags up cooperation with Microsoft on its car interface, what automaker wouldn't fall all over itself to work with Apple on this? You could easily imagine a company such as Volkswagen doing it, but it would be just as much of a PR coup for a company such as Chrysler or GM, that are aggressively clawing their way into 21st-century technology after stagnating to near oblivion in 2008.

It may be the case that the folks in Apple's skunkworks are currently furrowing their collective brows to repackage the Apple TV into an Apple television. But I hope that there is a far more secretive project underway to make driving a far more user-friendly experience.